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Thursday, March 22, 2012

A35YZ Tonga again - this time on 30m CW

Every morning, as you know, I take a little bit of time to scan the bands for any DX before heading to work. This morning, I saw A35YZ Tonga spotted on 12m CW and 30m CW, but was disappointed to find I couldn't hear them on either frequency. So I had my breakfast and a cup of tea.

At around 8.30, with only ten minutes left before I had to leave the house for work, I came back to 30 metres and could suddenly hear morse on 10.105, where A35YZ was spotted. Thinking this might be a different station, I sat and listened. The signal was very weak, not raising the needle at all, and there was lots of QSB and a bit of flutter. "It might be him," I thought, so I got ready to pounce.

My spot on the cluster after working A35YZ on 10 Mhz

Soon I could hear that it was indeed A35YZ and he was CQing quite a bit, which meant he was not busy. I selected 10.106 on VFO B and put on the split and gave him a call with 100 watts. Immediately I could hear what sounded like "KK" or "KC" and "5NN" so I gave him the call a couple more times and this time I could hear "EI2KC 5NN" and gave him my call once more followed by "5NN 5NN TU". And with that, Tonga was in the log again!

I suppose it was a lucky break. I have tried a number of times since that dxpedition started to get a listen to them but most of the time they are inaudible. However, morning time seems good for EI. I have now worked them on 20m and 30m, both at around 8 or 8.30 in the morning. You can see my cluster spot above, trying to encourage others to call him. Not many were hearing him though, because he sat for ages just calling and calling "A35YZ UP". He only worked one more station in the five minutes I sat there. See video below to get an indication how weak his signal was.